Journal of Anectdotal Evidence: Hurricane Bertha

I made up the "Journal of Anecdotal Evidence" as a farce, something to laugh about and a place to send manuscripts on what a researcher that s/he heard somewhere, somehow, sometime. So at least I'm up front about it. It seems as though there have been extreme weather reports, some of which reach biblical proportions. So I won't catch them all, but will try to post what I do see.

So here is an example that in and of itself doesn't prove anything, but is fascinating anyway. There are excellent web sites out there including Accuweather (too pricey for me, I'm afraid, but great content and experts), and one of the perhaps lesser known is wunderground.com that I believe began at the University of Michigan (Go Bucks!). There is a blog about tropical weather, and we have at least one oddity already in the young hurricane season.

(c) 2008, wunderground.com, accessed 19 July 2008.

According to the National Weather Service (6:15 PM EDT, 19 July 2008)

For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico...

The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on Hurricane
Bertha...located about 450 miles east-southeast of Cape Race
Newfoundland.

What?! A hurricane that far north? And that's not all. According to Reuters, accessed 6:23 PM 19 July 2008:

MIAMI, July 18 (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Bertha strengthened again into a hurricane on Friday as it accelerated toward the northeast over the open Atlantic, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The top sustained winds of the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic storm season had increased to 75 miles per hour (120 km per hour), just over the threshold at which tropical storms are upgraded, the Miami-based center said at 4:30 p.m. EDT (2230 GMT).

Bertha, an unusually resilient storm that appears likely to enter the history books as one of the longest-lived Atlantic storms on record [emphasis added], was no threat to land.

I am not a meteorologist, but I am a bit of a weather fanatic (meaning I'm very interested in it). It's this kind of extreme, "longest-lived Atlantic storms on record," that I will post as I see them. Briefly noted, there has been a back and forth about whether global warming will make hurricanes more fierce. A current research report just released goes back to the notion that hurricanes will be more fierce:

The nation can adapt to the changes that will result, the EPA report says, but it will have to weather heat waves and downpours, strengthened hurricanes, heat waves, air pollution and droughts. Source: http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Environmental_Protection_Agency_Warns_Of_Climate_Change_Toll_On_Health_20562.html, accessed 19 July 2008.

The report was issued on July 17 and reportedly was deliberately held back when it was ready to be presented in April. The document has extreme predictions about the effects of Global Warming, and this is an agency run by the Bush Administration (which probably explains the delay, but makes the dire predictions all the more striking).